THE 

BUILDING OF THE KINGDOM 

A DISCUSSION COURSE 


ALMIRA F. HOLMES 



The Building of the Kingdom 

A Discussion Course 


By 

Almira F. Holmes 


NEW YORK 

THE WOMANS PRESS 

600 LEXINGTON AVENUE 
1919 


■ H£ 


Copyright, 1919, by 

National Board, Young Womens Christian Associations 
or the United States of America 


NOV 17 !3S3 . 

©Cl. A 5 !J 6 6 0 2 


<VM> I 



CONTENTS 


I. The World To-day and Our Opportunity . . 7 

II. The Kingdom of God . . . . . 11 

III. The Faith of the Builders .... 15 

IV. The Builders’ Faith in God . . . . 19 

V. The Builders’ Faith in Christ .... 23 

VI. The Builders’ Faith in the Bible ... 30 

VII. The Builders’ Faith in the Church ... 35 

VIII. The Place of Prayer in Our Tasks ... 40 

IX. The Need of a Growing Vision .... 44 

X. The Spirit in Which the Builders Go Forth . . 48 









THE BUILDING OF THE KINGDOM 
























I. THE WORLD TO-DAY AND 
OUR OPPORTUNITY 


“Jesus was the initiator of the Kingdom of God. It is a real 
thing, now in operation. It is within us, and among us, gaining 
ground in our intellectual life and in our social institutions. It 
overlaps and interpenetrates all existing organizations, raising 
them to a higher level when they are good, resisting them when 
they are evil, quietly revolutionizing the old social order and 
changing it into new. It suffers terrible reverses; we are in the 
midst of one now; but after a time it may become apparent that 
a master hand has turned the situation and laid the basis of victory 
on the wrecks of defeat. The Kingdom of God is always coming; 
you can never lay your hand on it and say, 4 It is here.’ But such 
fragmentary realizations of it as we have, alone make life worth 
living. The memories which are still sweet and dear when the fire 
begins to die in the ashes are the memories of days when we lived 
fully in the Kingdom of Heaven, toiling for it, suffering for it, 
and feeling the stirring of the godlike and eternal within us. The 
most humiliating and crushing realization is that we have be¬ 
trayed our Heavenly Father and sold out for thirty pieces of 
silver. We often mistake it. We think we see its banner in the 
distance, when it is only the bloody flag of the old order. But a 
man learns. He comes to know whether he is in God’s country, 
especially if he sees the great Leader near him.”— Rauschenbusch , 
“The Social Principles of Jesus.” 

“We have seen our duty in too little terms; we have but dimly 
understood what the Master wanted of us. We are challenged to 
understand it now, the call is written in lines of fire on the map of 
the world; and we shall be renegade, indeed, if we do not now accept 
before it is too late, the opportunity for International Service 


7 


which the war reveals.”-— Fosdick, “The Challenge of the Present 
Crisis .” 

“A shining city, one 
Happy in snow and sun 
And singing in the rain 
A Paradisal strain. 

Here is a dream to keep 
You, Builders, from your sleep. 

O foolish Builders, wake! 

Take your trowels, take 
The Poet’s dream, and build 
The city song has willed, 

That every stone may sing, 

And all your roads may ring, 

With happy wayfaring! 

— Drinkwater, “The City.” 

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven 
and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 
And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from 
God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and be 
their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; 
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, 
neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are 
passed away. . . . Behold I make all things new.”—Rev. 21: 1-5. 


The World To-day and Our Opportunity 
Matt. 3: 1-6; Mark 1: 9, 12-13; John 4: 31-38; John 17 : 20-26 

A. Condition of the world. 

1. At home—roused from its self-satisfaction to look at 
itself honestly and see its 
a . Weaknesses. 

(1) Blindness to failure of existing institu¬ 

tions. 

(2) Illiteracy. 

(3) Physical disability of its people. 

(4) Extravagance and waste. 


8 


b. Strength. 

(1) Sympathetic response to suffering. 

(2) The growing organization of forces for 

righteousness. 

2. Abroad—torn, ravaged by war, reduced to a need which 
opens to us great opportunities for building 

a. By entering into a Christian internationalism. 

b. By making living and vital for non-Christian lands 

the real things of Christianity. 


B. The greatness of this task. 

1. In its range—world-wide. Matt. 28:16-20; John 10: 

16; Col. 3:11. 

“It is too light a thing 
That thou shouldst be my servant 
To raise up the tribes of Jacob, 

And to restore the preserved of Israel: 

I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, 

That thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.” 

—Isaiah 49 : 6. 

2. In its demands. Is. 61: 1-4; John 14: 12. 

3. In its vision and consecration. Rev. 7: 9-17. 

a. To see the principles that must govern us in our 

living together. Matt. 5, 6, 7. 

b. To put them into practice. Matt. 19:29; Phil. 

3:13,14. 

4. In its pioneer spirit of fearless adventure. Heb. 11: 8-10. 

“O young Mariner, 

Down to the haven 
Call your companions, 

Launch your vessel, 

And crowd your canvas, 

And, ere it vanishes 
Over the margin. 

After it, follow it, 

Follow the Gleam.” 


— Tennyson, “Merlin and the Gleam: 
9 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. How does the abundance of self-knowledge that we as a 

nation and as individuals are in possession of to-day, 
open up to us great opportunities for building the King¬ 
dom of God? 

2. How can we conserve and use those forces of strength which 

were available during the war? 

3. Can public spirit and religious feeling do as much for us as 

fear does in time of war? 

4. Are we as individuals responsible for our Internationalism 

being Christian? What does it mean to have an 
international mind? Provincialism has been one of the 
besetting sins of the United States. Can a Christian of 
to-day be provincial? 

5. What are the real things of Christianity which we want to 

make living and vital for non-Christian lands? Even 
though we know what they are and experience their 
reality in our own lives, how are we going to make them 
real to the people of countries to which we never go? 


10 


II. THE KINGDOM OF GOD 


“Evidently we have in this Kingdom of God a great challenge to 
every man and woman whose instincts rise above the mere level of 
keeping alive in this world. Its service is offered as the biggest 
opportunity that faces any human being.”— Harris-Robbins, “A 
Challenge to Life Service” 

“The Kingdom of God is a master fact. It takes control. When 
the Kingdom becomes a reality to us we cannot live on in the old 
way. We must repent, begin over, overhaul the values of life and 
put them down at their true price, and so readjust our funda¬ 
mental directions. The conduct of the individual must rise in 
response to higher conceptions of the meaning and possibilities of 
the life of humanity.”— Rauschenbusch , “The Social Principles of 
Jesus” 

“What a challenge that flings to America! In this hour she is 
great of purpose, noble and unselfish in ideals, humanitarian in 
aims. Her passion is democracy—an even greater democracy 
than she has herself known—for all the struggling world. Her 
first line of defense dies for it. Will she train her second line of 
defense to live for it? Home and church must answer, and any 
student of American child life knows that they should answer at 
once and as a unit, for childhood is an easy prey. . . . America, 
generous of spirit, has fallen into the weakness of the generous 
and good-hearted, she has been careless and wasteful. She has 
played the prodigal with her childhood, but now she must waken 
and face fact.”— Slattery , “The Second Line of Defense” 

“We are challenged by this war to a renovation of our popular 
Christianity, to a deep and unrelenting detestation of the little 
bigotries, the needless divisions, the petty obscurantisms that so 
deeply curse our churches, to a new experience and a more intel- 


11 


ligent expression of vital fellowship with God. Unless we can 
answer that challenge there is small use in our trying to answer 
any other. We must have a great religion to meet a great need. 

“He must have a callous soul who can pass through times like 
these and not hear a voice, whose call a man must answer or else 
lose his soul. Your country needs you! The Kingdom of God on 
earth needs you! The cause of Christ is hard bestead and 
righteousness is having a heavy battle in the earth—they need 
you !”■— Fosdick , “The Challenge of the Present Crisis .” 

“Wherever are tears and sighs, 

Wherever are children’s eyes, 

Where man calls man his brother 
And loves as himself another, 

Christ lives!” 

— Gilder, “Easter ” 


The Kingdom of God 
Mark 1:14-17 

A. Its nature—What is it? 

“It is the order that ought to exist to realize the greatest good 
for humanity. God knows it and wills it, and it is for us 
to discover and establish it. It is the reign of God.” 

B. Where is it? 

1. In the world, growing quietly. Matt. 13: 31-33. 

2. In the hearts of men. Luke 17: 20, 21. 

C. Who is in it? 

Matt. 7:21-23; Rev. 7:9-10. 

D. Foundations. 

They have already been laid by prophets (teachers of social 
righteousness), apostles (founders of the early church), 
and all the unnamed saints and martyrs, and all the 
humble followers of Christ. They laid the foundation; 
on it we build. 1 Cor. 3: 10, 11. 


12 


E. Growth —Reasons for slow growth. 

1. Permeates slowly. Matt. 13: 24-30. 

2. Few laborers. Matt. 9:37. 

3. Hidden talents. Matt. 25 : 14-30. 

4. Lack of self-sacrifice. Matt. 19: 16-24. 

5. Little vision. Matt. 23: 13-17, 23, 24. 

6. Lack of faith. Matt. 17:14-20. 

F. Character —A moral and spiritual Kingdom. 

For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteous¬ 
ness and joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. Rom. 14: 17. 
“Thy Kingdom come” means the Kingdom of God. “The 
laws of the Kingdom are the laws of God, the expression 
of character and purpose. Jesus Christ came into the 
world not only to show God’s fatherly character, but to 
make plain his will for human life.” 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What relations have various life occupations to the for¬ 

warding of the Kingdom of God in the world? How may 
a person use his business or profession to help the King¬ 
dom ? What can the home do to help bring the Kingdom ? 
On what has the distinction between sacred and secular 
been based? Is it justified? 

2. Is poverty a necessary evil? Why are people poor? Does 

Jesus throw any light on the problem of poverty? 

3. How can we measure the value of a person? 

4. What are the real causes of spiritual unrest? Can these be 

satisfied? How? 

5. Does a social concept like the Kingdom of God gain any¬ 

thing for its practical efficiency to-day from being 
ancient, and from being religious? Will such a concept 
ever be effective with the masses unless it is essentially 
religious ? 

6. In our missionary work, do you think only of the saving of 

souls of people, or do you think of the possible contribu- 


13 


tions that they can make to the civilization of the world? 
On what ground have nations justified the exploitation of 
the weaker people ? 

7. Is a person likely to hear a call to work among a people 

whose needs she does not know? How can we know the 
needs of the world? 

8. Does it show good judgment to keep on working in a place 

where the tangible results are small? 

9. Can we rest satisfied if we are bringing the Kingdom only to 

those at home? Have we discovered how we may help to 
bring it also to those far away? 


14 


III. THE FAITH OF THE BUILDERS 


“The faith was once given to the saints and once for all; and 
though men will understand it better from age to age, it is still the 
old faith of divine love and human duty.”— Speer. 

“A working faith is not a task, but a gift, not a burden that 
weighs men down but joy and peace and strength that girds for 
the task. It does not say ‘This is the minimum that you must 
believe in’; rather, ‘This is a life that you may have.’ Not what 
we must believe to be a Christian is proclaimed ‘Good News’ but 
rather the God in whom men might trust and from whom they 
might have life.”— Rail, “A Working Faith .” 

“O God, Thou who hast taught us to trust in Thee as our loving 
Father, open our hearts to share that larger faith which Thou hast 
for all Thy children of every age. Give to us faith to do every¬ 
thing, to plan everything in terms of the coming of Thy Kingdom, 
till the littleness of our knowledge is lost in the greatness of Thy 
love through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” 


“ ‘I am the True Vine,’ said our Lord, ‘and ye, 

My Brethren, are the branches,’ and that Vine, 

Then first uplifted in its place, and hung 
With its first purple grapes, since then has grown, 

Until its green leaves gladden half the world, 

And from its countless clusters rivers flow 
For healing of the nations, and its boughs 
Innumerable stretch through all the earth, 

Ever increasing, ever each entwined 
With each, all living from the Central Heart, 

And you and I, my brethren, live and grow, 

Branches of that immortal stem.” 

— King, “The Disciples.” 


15 


Faith of the Builders 
Hebrews 11 

A. What is it? Heb. 11:1. 

1. A quality of mind. 

“Faith is the quality of mind that sees things before 
they are visible, which acts on ideals before they are 
realities, and which feels the distant Kingdom of God to 
be more real and attractive than the profitable present. 
But a great and firm faith is the product of a lifetime of 
prayer and loving action. Light is sown in the righteous 
and if we would gather the wisdom of life and grow from 
knowledge to knowledge, advance from mystery to mys¬ 
tery, we cannot begin too early to become grounded in the 
faith.” 

Illustration. —Daniel, the image, the stone—Dan. 2: 
31-35. Hebrews keeping the faith, in Babylon, in spite 
of fiery persecutions—Dan. 3. What debt of gratitude 
will future generations owe to the Armenians, who in 
these years have kept themselves loyal to their faith? 

2. One of the abiding things. 1 Cor. 13:13. 

B. Its reaction on the individual. 

1. Frees him from fear. Ps. 55:18, 23. 

Illustration. —Disciples on the water, in the storm, 
waken Jesus. The water is stilled. 

2. Empowers him who has it. 1 John 5:4, 5; Matt. 6: 

24-33. 

“Fear paralyzes—faith empowers.” Peter is paralyzed 
by his fear, in the judgment hall; later, on the shore, and 
later still at work in the world, Jesus’ faith in him and 
his answering faith in his Risen Lord fill him with power. 
Mark 14:66-72; John 21: 15-19; Acts 4:13-21. 

3. Makes life joyful. Ps. 27: 6. 

4. Believes in the ultimate triumph of righteousness. Ps. 

118:1-6. 


16 


C. The fellowship of faith. 

1. Continuity of faith. Heb. 11: 39, 40; 12:1, 2. 

“The fellowship of faith is not bounded by the earth. 
The New Testament believers not only held but vividly 
apprehended that the whole family to which they be¬ 
longed in Christian communion was ‘in heaven and on 
earth.’ .... The mark and seal of their fellowship is 
that they kept the faith. When others despaired, lost 
heart, and deserted causes on which man’s welfare hung, 
they kept the faith. When mysteries perplexed their 
minds and discouragement, to human vision, was more 
rational than hope, they turned from sight to insight and 
they kept the faith. When new knowledge, half under¬ 
stood, disturbed old forms of thought and multitudes 
were confused in uncertainty and disbelief, they kept the 
faith.”— Fosdick, “The Meaning of Faith .” 

2. Communion of saints. Rom. 1:11, 12. 

All faiths are social. 1 Cor. 4: 7. 


“For all the saints who from their labors rest. 
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, 
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. 

Alleluia! 


“O blest communion, fellowship divine, 
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine; 
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine. 
Alleluia! 


“From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast, 
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, 
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 

Alleluia! 


— How. 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Why do we love to sing the hymns and songs of the people 

of God in other ages even when they do not express our 
own thinking? 

2. Read Heb. 11:39, 40. How do you explain, “They all died 

in faith not having received the promise, God having 


17 


prepared for us some better thing, that they without us 
should not be made perfect”? 

3. Can a Christian face the world situation with more poise 

than a non-Christian? Why? Have great leaders of 
men and of nations been men of large faith? What was 
the secret of Jesus’ peace and hope? 

4. What do we mean by the phrase “a working faith”? To 

what extent is faith a part of ambition and ambition a 
part of faith? Can ambition be expressed in terms of 
faith? 


18 


IV. THE BUILDERS’ FAITH IN GOD 


Psalm 95 : 1-6; Isaiah 40: 12-26. 

“The essence of religion is the conscious presence of a living God 
in the hearts of men.” 

“God is the object of our faith.” 

“Can we know a personal God? How? First comes a conviction 
that he is real, then comes a venture, a surrender to these as that 
which is worth while. Then comes the knowledge far broader and 
richer than our first vision, at its best something big enough to 
satisfy our life, and strong enough to hold it. Here is friendship, 
love. We only know as we dare. The great treasures of life, 
truth and loyalty, and love and rest, are never known from the 
outside. They belong to those who love. They are known only 
from within. The treasures of life have come to those who dared. 

“Think of God in terms of the fairest of all human beings in 
Jesus Christ. See the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in 
the face of Jesus Christ. 

“Said an American college student now a soldier in France, ‘I 
feel somehow as if everything is all right and God and I understand 
each other. I reach out and touch Him and know He is there.’ 

“By practising the presence of God, we come to feel Him as a 
part of our ordinary life; and soon we find that all our life is God 
guided and God protected and this brings us peace within though 
wars may rage without.”— Fiske, “Finding the Comrade God.” 

“God, who at sundry times in manners many 
Spake to the fathers, and is speaking still, 

Eager to find if ever or if any 

Souls will obey and hearken to his wills 

“Who, that one moment has the least descried Him 
Dimly and faintly, hidden and afar, 

Does not despise all excellence beside Him, 

Pleasures and powers that are not and that are,— 


19 


“Ay, amid all men bear himself thereafter— 

Smit with a solemn and a sweet surprise, 

Dumb to their scorn, and turning on their laughter, 

Only the dominance of earnest eyes! 

“Gentle and faithful, tyrannous and tender, 

Ye that have known Him, is He sweet to know? 

Softly He touches, for the reed is slender, 

Wisely enkindles, for the flame is low.” 

— Myers, “St. Paul” 

“Eternal God, our Maker and our Father, Thou hast opened our 
eyes to see Thee in the beauty of Thy world, in Thy revealed 
word, in the lives of Thy children and through Thy still, small 
voice in our hearts. We worship Thee for Thy utter holiness and 
purity which has reached us and found us. Amen.” 


Faith in God 

A. A great God. Ps. 104. 

“As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 

Behold, I will build me a nest in the greatness of God: 

I will fly in the greatness of God; as the marsh-hen flies 

In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies: 

By so many roots as the marsh grass sends to the sod, 

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God.” 

— Lanier, “The Marshes 

1. In power. Is. 40:28-31. 

2. In holiness. Is. 6: 1-12. 

3. In love. Luke 15: 3-7; John 3: 16. 

B. A God who needs us to work with Him. 1 Cor. 3: 6-9 ; 

John 15: 1-8. 

“In the stress of these crisis days, if men discover a 
new sense of God’s reality and his presence, it is a woeful 
waste of spiritual forces unless this experience brings 
fresh power into our lives, a deeper devotion to humanity. 
We gain this new sense of power just as soon as we make 
the crowning discovery that we may be co-workers with 
God in all his purposes for our lives. 


20 


“God is forcing the world forward, and we ought to be 
alive to God in the glad recognition and participation in 
this forward movement.”— FisJce , “Finding the Comrade 
God.” 

C. A near God, the Father God. Ps. 121; Matt. 6: 7-9. 
Made known to us by Jesus. John 14. 

“It is because our Father God is like Jesus in his char¬ 
acter that we love Him. When we know Jesus Christ, we 
discover the personal God, for He reveals to us what 
God is like. He interprets to our minds and hearts the 
God who is our Father.” 

D. An indwelling Spirit, the spirit of truth. John 4 : 23- 

24; 15:26-27. 

“Spirit of Truth, 

Teach us the way to find. 

For in thy light our eyes 
Need be no longer blind. 

“Spirit of Joy, 

Thy radiance enthrone, 

Until our lives reflect 
The glory of thine own. 

“Spirit of Light, 

Guide us upon our way. 

Dispel our night, and bring 
The wonder of thy day. 

“Spirit of Love, 

From self our hearts set free 
To serve the least of men, 

In service given to Thee.” 

— Short. 

“We cannot get far away from God. (Ps. 139: 7-12.) He is 
not far. He is here. This Spirit for whom there is no better 
name than the Spirit of Jesus is our continual companion. There 
is no friend with whom we deal more directly and more continually 
than with Him. Every time we open an inspiring book and de¬ 
voutly study it, the Spirit is pleading for entrance. Every time 


21 


we pray, He stands at the door and knocks. Every time some 
child in need, or some great cause demanding sacrifice, lays claim 
on us, this Spirit is crying to be let in. Men’s hunger for food, 
their love for family and friends, are not more direct, concrete, 
immediate experiences than our dealings with this Spirit of our 
Lord. He is not only God the Father. He is God the Spirit, 
striving to dwell within us and work through us.” 

“If God speak to thee in the summer air, 

The cool, swift breath thou leanest forth to feel 
Upon thy forehead—dost thou feel it God? 

Nay, but the Wind; and when heart speaks to heart, 

And face to face, when: friends meet happily, 

And all is merry, God is also there;—” 

— King, “The Disciples” 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What do you see God doing in these days? 

2. If only one word were allowed with which to sum up Chris¬ 

tianity, what would that word be? 

3. If God is like Jesus, why is progress not more sure and 

definite? Where is the trouble? 

4. In what condition of mind is the man who wakes up to the 

enormous needs of this world without seeing the divine 
reinforcements at hand in God? 

5. Do you wish that you could see God? Why is it far better 

that you cannot? Can you really see a human person¬ 
ality? How do persons reveal themselves? Have you 
ever in times of crisis been suddenly aware of God to an 
unusual degree? What made Him seem so real to you 
then ? 

6. How does Jesus help you to feel that God is a person? 

7. To what extent do you trust God’s help in your personal 

life? What does Sidney Lanier mean by “I will heartily 
lay me a-hold on the greatness of God”? 

8. Put into a definite statement your idea of God. 


22 


y. THE BUILDERS’ FAITH IN CHRIST 


“The greatest fact in history is Jesus Christ. In a remarkable 
way Jesus has won the world’s devotion. He has done this by the 
drawing power of his matchless character, and his revealing to 
the world what God is like. For He lived the human life of God. 

“ ‘Follow me,’ He said. There can be no other way of knowing 
Him. 

“The great matter is that Jesus believed that God was willing 
to take the human soul and make it new and young and clean 
again. But the human soul did not believe it, till Jesus convinced 
it, and won it, by action of his own. ‘The Son of Man came to 
seek and to save that which was lost’ and He did not come in vain. 

“ ‘Jesus,’ writes Doctor Fosdick, ‘has the most joyous idea of 
God that ever was thought of.’ That joyous sense of God he has 
given to his followers, and it stands in vivid contrast with the feel¬ 
ings men have toward God in the other religions. Christianity is 
the religion of joy. The New Testament is full of it. 

“To see God—to know God—that is what Jesus means—to get 
away from all the fusses and troubles of life into the presence of 
God, and to know He is ours; to see Him smile, to realize that He 
wants us to stay there, that He is a real Father with a Father’s 
heart, that his love is on the same wonderful scale as every one of 
his attributes, and in reality far more intelligible than any of 
them. That is the picture Jesus draws. The sheer incredible love 
of God, the wonderful change it means for all life, that is his teach¬ 
ing and He encourages us ‘to enjoy God for ever,’ as Jesus Him¬ 
self does. Those who learn his secret enjoy God in reality. 
Wherever they see God with the eyes of Jesus, it is joy and peace. 
And they realize with deepening emotion that this also is God’s 
gift. 


23 


“Perhaps when we begin to understand what is meant by the 
Incarnation we may find that omnipotence has a great deal more 
to do than we have supposed with natural sympathy and the genius 
for entering into the sorrows and suffering of other people. 

“The heart of friendship and the heart of the Incarnation are 
in essence the same thing—giving oneself in frankness and love to 
Him who will accept and by them winning him who refuses. 

“The recurrence of the sweet and deep name, Father, unveils 
the secret of his being. His heart is at rest in God. Rest in God 
is the very note of all his being, of all his teaching, the keynote of 
all prayer in his thought. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,’ our 
prayers are to begin, and perhaps we are not to go on until we 
realize what we are saying in that great form of speech. It is cer¬ 
tain that as those words grow for us into the full stature of their 
meaning for Jesus, we shall understand in a more intimate way 
what the whole gospel is in reality.”— Glover , “The Jesus of 
History .” 

“Fight the good fight with all thy might, 

Christ is thy life, and Christ thy right. 

Lay hold on life and it shall be 
Thy joy and crown eternally. 

“Run the swift race, through God’s good grace, 

Lift up thine eyes, and seek his Face. 

Life with its way, before thee lies, 

Christ is thy path, and Christ thy prize. 

“Cast care aside, lean on thy guide, 

His boundless mercy will provide, 

Trust, and thy trusting soul shall prove, 

Christ is its life, and Christ its love. 

“Faint not nor fear, his arms are near. 

He changes not, and thou art dear. 

Only believe and thou shalt see, 

That Christ is all in all to thee.” 

— Monsell. 

O Christ, we thank Thee that Thou art! We thank Thee that 
Thou art here! We do not require that we should see Thee. We 
do not ask to touch Thee. We only pray that Thou wilt come 
into our hearts as Thou hast come through all the ages to men 


24 


and women when they cried to Thee, and flood them with thy 
radiant joy. Amen. 

Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead, the 
great shepherd of the sheep, with the blood of the everlasting 
covenant, even our Lord Jesus Christ, make you perfect in every 
good thing to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing 
in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever 
and ever. Amen.—Heb. 13: 20. 


Jesus Christ 
Ephesians 3:14-21 

A. As Son of the Father—revealing God to man. 

1. Conscious of his relationship. 

“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s busi¬ 
ness ?”•—Luke 2: 49. 

“Thou art my beloved Son.”—Luke 3’: 22. 

Advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with God 
and men. Luke 2:52; Heb. 5:8; John 5 : 17. 

2. Making his conscious relationship the way by which we 

come to know the Father. John 14:6; 10: 1-18; Heb. 
10:19-25. 

“O Thou, who art the perfect Way 
Be Thou our guide. 

Grant that we make a road this day, 

So straight and wide, 

That having cleared our hearts from sin 
We may prepare thy way within.” 

3. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” the kind of Father that 

Jesus knows. 

a. Interested in all the beautiful things that we have. 

Matt. 6:30; 10:29. 

b. Loving and caring for us more than we can com¬ 

prehend. Matt. 10:30; Luke 12:30. The 
thought on which Jesus lays great empha¬ 
sis in his teaching about God is that God cares 
about you and me more than we can possibly 


25 


imagine. It is not easy to believe; we can be¬ 
lieve it only as we learn it from Jesus. 

c. Having faith in us. Luke 19: 1-10. 

d. Able to do all things for us. Matt. 19: 23-26; 7 : 

7-11; 11:27-30. 

e. A Father, the discovery of whom is beyond all 

value. Matt. 13: 44, 46. 

“What is the innermost thing in a father’s relation 
to his children?” The enjoyment of the child. 
The grappling of the little mind with big 
things, odd ways in which gratitude and affec¬ 
tion express themselves. Jesus says God is as 
real a father as anybody else; and loves his 
children because they are real; because they 
are not clever, because they do make such queer 
and imperfect prayers, because they need Him 
and they fill a place in his heart. What is 
Jesus’ “good news”? The gospel of God and 
man needing each other and finding each other. 

The strong man among men—revealing man to man. 

1. By his understanding of them. “Crowds had always an 
appeal for Jesus. When they came about Him they 
claimed Him and possessed Him.” He understood their 
physical needs. (Matt. 14:14; 20:9; 23:14; Mark 
5: 43; 8: 3; Luke 14: 12, 13.) “People despaired of 
the masses and left them alone. They did not know that 
the Father also cares for these children.” Jesus under¬ 
stood their hunger for God. “Is not the life more than 
meat and the body than raiment?” (Matt. 5:22; 
9:36; Luke 7: 34; 19:10; 15: 5.) He understood the 
temptation that money brought with it, and he also 
understood how greatly it could be used for good. 
(Luke 16: 9, 20; 15 : 8-10; Matt. 20: 15.) He under¬ 
stood the weakness of men. (Matt. 15:8, 14, 19; 
Matt. 23:27; Luke 22:31; Matt. 19: 21). He also 
understood as no one else has ever done, how great 


26 


possibilities there were in just ordinary people. (Luke 
19:1-10; Matt. 4: 18-20; 16: 17-19; 9: 9.) 

2. By serving them. 

Feeding, healing, teaching them, He was always serv¬ 
ing them, even as He would have them serve one an¬ 
other. He put his finger on the weak spots in their 
lives, He always told them the truth, He forgave sins, 
He started them on the way to a new life of purity and 
joy. He had faith in them to carry on his work. 
(Find references to prove that He did these things.) 
“His belief in men shows in his choice of the twelve. He 
trusts to them the supremest tasks men ever had as¬ 
signed to them. Jesus was always at his leisure for 
individuals; that was the natural outcome of his faith 
in men. What else is the meaning of his readiness to 
spend Himself in giving the utmost spiritual truth— 
no easy task as experience shows us—even to a solitary 
listener!” 

C. The Victor over the world, sin and death. 

1. He accepted the world as it was; the necessary conditions 

of man’s life. He saw human misery and need wide¬ 
spread as we do, but He believed, taught and lived in 
a faith in the Fatherhood of God which was greater 
than the need and wretchedness. 

Your Heavenly Father knows. (Matt. 6: 82.) With 
God all things are possible. (Mark 10: 27.) “0 ye of 

little faith! Whose sea is it? Whose wind is it? 
Whose children are you? Cannot you trust your 
Father to control his wind and his sea?” (Matt. 8: 26.) 

2. Sin—conquered the temptation to sin in Himself. (Matt. 

4:1-11; Heb. 4:15, 16.) 

Conquered the power of sin in others by 

Intercession—As He walked down the street he met 
sin as we do, He loathed it as we do, but He did not 
shut his heart to it. He let the sins and sufferings 
of people in upon Him, and carried them, people, 


27 


sin, loathsomeness, all to God. That was interces¬ 
sion, and led Him into a realization that He must 
bear their sins on the cross. He lived with the 
disciples, He loved them, He prayed for Peter. 
(Luke 22:32.) He watched, listened to them all, 
carried them to God in prayer, and came to know 
that they could be transformed only by his death on 
the cross. 

“Nay, but much rather let me, late returning. 

Bruised of my brethren, wounded from within. 

Stoop with sad countenance and blushes burning, 

Bitter with weariness and sick with sin. 

“Then as I weary me and long and languish. 

Nowise availing from that pain to part— 

Desperate tides of the whole great world’s anguish 
Forced through the channels of a single heart, 

“Straight to thy presence, get me and reveal it. 

Nothing ashamed of tears upon thy feet, 

Show the sore wound and beg thine hand to heal it, 

Pour thee the bitter, pray thee for the sweet. 

“Then with a ripple and a radiance thro’ me 
Rise and be manifest, O Morning Star! 

Flow on my soul, thou Spirit, and renew me. 

Fill with thyself, and let the rest be far.” 

—Myers, “St. Paul” 

3. Death. 1 Cor. 15: 20, 21; 15: 55-58; Col. 3: 1-4. 

The great fact of the resurrection is the Living Christ. 
The question as to whether it is a physical, supernatural 
or spiritual resurrection is of little importance. Back 
of every great force is a great power. Back of Chris¬ 
tianity is the power of the Risen, Living Lord. 

“Through love to light! O wonderful the way 
That leads from darkness to the perfect day! 

From darkness and from sorrow of the night 
To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. 

Through love to light! Through light, O God, to Thee, 

Who art the love of love, the Eternal light of light!” 

— Gilder, “After-song .” 


28 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 


1. “And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus 

was moving on before them, and they began to wonder, 
and as they followed they began to be afraid.” But it is 
Jesus. They love Him. They follow and they begin to 
understand. How far are we prepared to go in sharing 
Jesus’ experience? Shall we stop when we begin to be 
afraid? What will determine our possibility of under¬ 
standing Him? 

2. Some people say that what we need to-day is a greater em¬ 

phasis on Christ’s teaching and his way of living, and 
less on his resurrection. What do you say about this? 

3. How do you explain the remark of a returned soldier who 

said that while in France in the trenches he had a real 
sense of peace and trust in God? He felt that God was 
near him, and would take care of him, but he did not think 
of Christ at all. 

4. How much is involved in Jesus’ name “Father”? Less or 

more than the word means in the case of a human father? 
What is the attitude of a child to his father? 


29 


VI. THE BUILDERS’ FAITH IN 
THE BIBLE 


“The Bible is alive because it comes out of life. You always 
bear voices whenever you go near the Bible. Sometimes you hear 
men talking with eager zest. Sometimes you hear them pleading. 
Sometimes you hear them weeping. Sometimes you hear them 
singing. But you always hear their armies marching. Workers 
are laboring. Judges are hearing complaints. Kings are ruling. 
People are busy about the interests of life. There is a stir and a 
movement everywhere. And above all the human voices is the high 
command of that great voice which speaks with the authority that 
comes from the Master of life Himself. In the Bible, human life 
becomes articulate. And deeper than that, in the Bible, God 
becomes articulate, speaking in the language of men.”— Hough , 
“A Living Book in a Living Age 

“Here is no book dropped down from heaven, but something 
that has come up out of the life of the people. Here are the tales 
of its ancient heroes. Here is the story of its wars and oppres¬ 
sions. Here are the wise maxims of all its sages, the stirring ser¬ 
mons of its preachers, the book of its songs and prayers and its 
laws of every part of life. It is no book of the dead letter. It 
throbs with life. Prick it anywhere and it bleeds. Here are the 
prayers and hopes and tears and longings, the story of sin and 
failure, the story of high aspiration and splendid faith and deed. 
Because it is a human book, there is real history here. The life is 
bound up with other life, and knows movement and progress. The 
movement is not always upward. The great prophets are like 
mountain peaks and the land slopes away on this side as on that. 
But the forward look is always there, and dawn yields at last to 
the full day and we move up to Christ. And how intensely human 


30 


the men are whom we meet: Isaiah, with his vision and his boldness ; 
Hosea, with his tragic life; Amos, outspoken and fearless; Micah, 
with his passion for men and righteousness; Jeremiah, with his 
mingled tenderness and strength! And when we come to the 
highest of all, the human element is not least, but richest. In all 
this human book, the most human part is the Gospels. Look at 
their pictures from the life of our Lord, helpless child and loving 
mother, growing boy and anxious parents; the friends and the 
craving for sympathy and companionship, hunger and weariness, 
the hours of prayer, the garden with its struggle, and its crying, 
and the words upon the cross. 

“And it is the universal book. It belongs to every age and 
every nation, and it speaks to every need. Born in the East and 
clothed in oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways 
of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find 
its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of lan¬ 
guages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the 
monarch that he is a servant of the Most High, and into the cot¬ 
tage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children 
listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder 
them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of 
peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light 
for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly 
of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lowly. 
The wicked and the proud tremble at its warning, but to the 
wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s voice. It has woven 
itself into our deepest affections, and colored our dearest dreams. 
Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us 
uncalled. They fill our prayer with power larger than we know, 
and the beauty of them lingers on our ear long after the sermons 
which they adorned have been forgotten.”— Rail , “A Working 
Faith” 


The Bible 

A. A library of many kinds of books, a classic of selected 
material, translated into our tongue, full of char¬ 
acter and power. 


31 


1. History of the Hebrew people as a nation being led by 

the hand of God. 

2. Prophecy. Sermons of the prophets bound up with the 

national history, containing bits of their life history, 
their call to their work, struggles, responses. The 
prophets were great reformers, preachers of right¬ 
eousness, pointing out to the people of their own gen¬ 
eration, their injustice to the weak, their disloyalty to 
Jehovah. 

3. Stories. Ruth, story of family loyalty, a tradition cher¬ 

ished in Bethlehem as an interesting chapter in David’s 
family history. Esther, story of race loyalty. Friend¬ 
ship stories: Abraham, the friend of God; David and 
Jonathan; Samuel and Eli; Jesus and his friends. 
Beginning stories: Beginnings of life, sin, death, found 
in Genesis. Missionary story: Jonah. 

4. Poetry. Job, a great drama: the thirty-first chapter one 

of the greatest descriptions of righteousness found in 
all literature; a great literary drama, teaching the 
value of independent thought, showing the necessity 
for men to be honest with themselves. It helps us 
to-day to see with our own eyes, to think things out for 
ourselves and to follow the truth wherever it may lead. 
Psalms, songs that have furnished bridal hymns, battle 
songs, pilgrim marches, penitential prayers, public 
praises of every nation in Christendom. Psalms 120- 
134 are the songs of the pilgrimages, sung on journeys 
up to Jerusalem, full of love for city, and trust in God’s 
care. Psalms 42-49, 50, 84-87, and 73-83 are some of 
the songs used in choruses in public worship. 

5. New Testament. Books of “good news,” of the coming 

of Jesus Christ, his life on earth, his teachings and 
works, the founding of his Church by his loyal follow¬ 
ers, told by different men in different ways, but con¬ 
taining in spite of the differences a very real unity 
because of the remarkable love for a remarkable per¬ 
son. The authors are all dominated by a passionate 


32 


loyalty to Jesus and a desire to spread abroad among 
men his ideas, his way of living. The influence of Jesus 
caused Paul to undertake his missionary campaigns, 
in the midst of which he wrote his letters to the 
churches. It created an intense desire to perpetuate 
his teachings and personal influence by the writing of 
the Gospels, which bring us face to face with Jesus 
Christ. 

B. A record of Christian experiences. 

1. These experiences center around God. They are im¬ 

portant because of the experiences themselves, regard¬ 
less of the ways in which they are recorded. God put 
Himself into people’s lives and put into their hearts a 
desire to tell others, but He let them tell it in their 
own way, using their own figures of speech and their 
own choice of words. 

2. They tell of a growing experience of God. From a tribal 

deity on Mount Sinai, He grows to be a God who is a 
“Spirit, worshipped neither on this mountain nor in 
Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth.” (John 4: 21- 
24.) From a champion in battle, a God of war, He 
comes to be known as a God of love, the Father God. 
(John 3:16.) 

C. A standard of religious experience —a laying down of 

principles, not laws or systems. We cannot follow the 
Levitical laws, because they belong to another age, but 
we can follow the Ten Commandments, because they are 
great principles of life. We find in the Bible the record 
of other people’s relationship to God, and know what 
our relationship may be. But we cannot govern our 
lives to-day by rules that great people of the Bible laid 
down to govern their followers. From Paul’s relation¬ 
ship to Jesus, we know what ours may be, but we can¬ 
not govern our women according to his rules for 
women. The New Testament Church contained the 
faith, hope and love that ought to abide in the Church 


33 


of all time, but its method of organization is not bind¬ 
ing on us to-day. 

D. Christ’s attitude toward the Bible. 

1. Knowledge of it. Luke 4: 16, 17; Matt. 13: 54. 

2. Use of it. 

a. Quoted Old Testament passages, especially from 

Hosea and Isaiah. 

b. Fulfilled—“not to destroy but to fulfil.” (Matt. 

5:17-20.) Give illustrations of ways in which 
Christ fulfilled the Scriptures. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Every person has her own Bible within the Bible. What is 

your Bible? 

2. In what ways does a growing Christian enlarge her Bible? 

Are all parts of the Bible equally important? Did you 
ever read the book through from beginning to end? 
Would you suggest that young Christians read their 
Bibles in that way? 

3. What makes the Bible great above all other books? 

4. Read Matt. 5: 17-20. How do you explain those words of 

Jesus? Does a responsibility for fulfilling Christ’s 
teachings rest on us to-day? 

5. Read Judges 6:11, 12; 1 Sam. 3: 1-4, 10; John 17: 20-23; 

Rev. 22: 17. Does the Bible have a special message for 
an age of democracy? What is the relation between faith 
in people and the democratic movement? 


34 


VII. THE BUILDERS’ FAITH IN 
THE CHURCH 


“The church has come singing down the ages.” 


“We thank thee that thy church, unsleeping. 
While earth rolls onward into light, 
Through all the world her watch is keeping, 
And rests not now by day or night. 

“As o’er each continent and island 
The dawn leads on another day. 

The voice of prayer is never silent. 

Nor dies the strain of praise away. 

“The sun, that bids us rest, is waking 
Our brethren ’neath the western sky; 

And hour by hour fresh lips are making 
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.” 


— Carlyle. 


— Ellerton. 


“From the very beginning the growth of the Christian faith and 
the life of Christian men have been inseparable from the Christian 
Church. In her bosom the saints of all ages have been nurtured. 
The noblest lives of our race, far-famed or humble, have gained 
their faith through her message, and their strength in her fellow¬ 
ship. She has given birth to schools and hospitals, and every 
manner of philanthropy; she has inspired the vast majority of 
those who have wrought in great reform or gracious ministry. 
The greatest treasure of our race, the story of Christ and of his 
first followers, was brought forth by her devotion and handed 
down by her care. Wherever Christian faith and life have gone, 
it has been by her missionary zeal. And nowhere do we find the 
Christian religion surviving without the Christian Church. 

“The church brings to men the vision of God, forgiveness of sin 
and fellowship with God. It gives them the ideal of life, and then 


35 


supplies the power to achieve that ideal. And last of all, it in¬ 
spires them with the vision of the Kingdom, and sends them out 
with the passion for service. 

“The church of to-morrow will have power with men just so 
far as it shall have the spirit of Jesus Christ. If it shall be loyal 
to the truth, filled with the spirit of service and love, ruled by a 
passion for justice and right, and the service of men, then it shall 
be the church of power, with such an authority as it has never had 
before. And this will make the united Church of to-morrow for 
which we are praying. For the unity, like the authority, must 
come from the nature of Christianity itself. No authorit} r of pope 
or council can give it, no agreement as to organization or creed 
can bring it about. It must be the unity of the inner spirit, a 
common loyalty to Jesus Christ, a deeper devotion to the great 
task of serving men and bringing about his Kingdom.”— Rail , 
“A Working Faith” 

“The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord: 

She is his new creation by water and the word; 

From heaven He came and sought her to be his holy bride; 

With his own blood He bought her, and for her life He died.” 

— Stone . 


The Church 

Matt. 16:13-18 ; Acts 2 : 41-47 

In this day of much criticism of the Church, and agitation con¬ 
cerning its failures, we approach it as those who are in it, and in 
whose lives it has played a definite part. We consider our reasons 
for keeping our faith in it, and our loyalty to it. 

A. Peace of spiritual birth and nourishment. 

Heritage from our fathers. Our lives have unconsciously 
been nurtured by its hymns, prayers, Bible truths; 
there first we heard God speak to us, there we made 
our first public confession, there we first began to work 
for others. In its schools and colleges many of us 
were educated. 


36 


B. Place of fellowship — “I believe in the communion of 
saints.” 

1. Social fellowship. 

The growing life is one of constantly closer relations, 
deepening interdependence. Notice Jesus’ desire for 
fellowship. 

a. Took the disciples with Him when He went to 

spend the night in prayer. 

b. “Ye are they that have continued with me in my 

temptations.” 

c. “With desire have I desired to eat this passover 

with you.” 

d. “Could ye not watch this one little hour with me?” 

The first church had no creed, it had just a 
faith and a fellowship. (Acts 2:42.) The 
fellowship was inseparable from the faith. 

2. Democratic fellowship. 

The church universal is neither Baptist nor Methodist, 
Presbyterian nor Episcopal, but the Church of Christ. 
It asks no questions as to wealth or social standing of 
those who come to its doors. Within men are led into 
the presence of God, before whom nothing counts but 
a pure and penitent heart. 

3. Comprehensive. 

It shows the whole round world belted with prayer and 
praise, and tells us that we are a part of all this. 
“Here are the thronging worshippers of Korea lately 
emerged from paganism, here is the swift growing host 
scattered all through the great Chinese republic, 
here are the thatched chapels of the Philippines, the 
huts of Africa, and the great cathedrals of the ancient 
world. And all the great heroes of the faith, and all 
the unnamed multitude of humble, loyal lives belong to 
that same fellowship, and all belong to Him.”— Rail, 
“A Working Faith” 


37 


C. Peace of worship. 


1. “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word”— 

Here we get the word. “The hunger deeper than that 
for bread, and the questions reaching beyond those of 
work and wage are met.” Here we are led into the 
presence of the God whom we can worship. “This vital 
faith is not simply a gift, but an attainment.” It 
grows under the influence that comes from united wor¬ 
ship with others. 

2. The place where we keep the two beautiful sacraments, 

the Lord’s Supper and Baptism. 

D. Jesus’ attitude toward the church of his day. Luke 
4: 15, 16; Matt. 13: 54; Mark 1: 2. 

The church of Jesus’ day was not as sincere or righteous 
as our churches. Jesus found much in the temple serv¬ 
ices that distressed Him. There was less efficiency in 
the church, less social service going out from it. But 
it was Jesus’ custom to go to the synagogue. He took 
part in its services. He attended the appointed feasts 
of the national church. Why did he go to the syn¬ 
agogue? His private devotions he pursued on the 
mountain top. Can it be that he received strength 
from the synagogue? Was there a value for Him in 
the give and take of comradeship, the revelation of 
human needs and aspirations? Surely here He saw 
humanity at its best, and saw where it was missing its 
way even when it was at its best. Does the fact that 
Jesus went to the synagogue to give as well as to re¬ 
ceive, account in some degree for the value of the serv¬ 
ice to Him? Have you ever looked into the faces of 
people during the hour of worship, and known that 
they, too, were missing the way? Has that knowledge 
made you feel that here was a responsibility that you 
ought not to shirk, or has it meant for you a joyous 
opportunity to try to help another to find the way? 


38 


E. Our personal obligations to it. 

Shall we serve our church by staying away, or by attending 
her services, and becoming a part of her life? 

“I was glad when they said unto me, 

Let us go unto the house of Jehovah. 

Our feet are standing 
Within Thy gates, O Jerusalem.” 

—Psalm 122 :1-2. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Would you be willing to live in a community without a 

church? Why or why not? 

2. How far is an organized institution, like the church, neces¬ 

sary, if Christians are to solve such problems as class, 
race, national rivalries and antagonisms, poverty, dis¬ 
honesty, spiritual unrest ? 

3. If a person is going to do his most effective work in bringing 

in the Kingdom, must he ally himself with a church? 
Why or why not? 

4. Why does alliance with a church tend against provincial¬ 

ism? How far do the backwardness and inefficiency of 
a local church destroy the possibility of working through 
it? What responsibility to a church has an individual 
member ? 

5. What can the Christian institutions, organized for united 

work, do to help the church and bring about the King¬ 
dom? 


39 


VIII. THE PLACE OF PRAYER IN 
OUR TASKS 


“For prayer will in time make the human countenance its own 
divinest altar; years upon years of true thoughts, like ceaseless 
music shut up within, will vibrate along the nerves of expression 
until the lines of the living instrument are drawn into correspond¬ 
ence and the harmony of visible form matches the unheard har¬ 
monies of the mind.” 

Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion, 

And unto Thee shall the vow be performed; 

O Thou that hearest prayer. 

Unto Thee shall all flesh come. 

—Psalm 65 :1, 2. 

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, 

Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 

Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. 

I will set him on high, because he hath known my name, 

He shall call upon me, and I will answer him, 

I will be with him in trouble; 

I will deliver him and honor him, 

With long life will I satisfy him. 

And show him my salvation. 

—Psalm 91 :1, I 4 -I 6 . 

Ask of me and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, 

And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 

—Psalm 2 :8. 

“To pray together, in whatever tongue or ritual, is the most 
tender brotherhood of hope and sympathy that men can contract 
in this life .”—De Stael. 

“O Thou, by whom we come to God,— 

The Life, the Truth, the Way; 

The path of prayer Thyself hast trod; 

Lord, teach us how to pray.” 


40 


Prayer 

Neh. 2:1-6, 11-18; Luke 6: 12, 13 

A. Does not take the place of work. Neh. 2:1-6. 

Note the two words of action. How did Nehemiah differ 
from those of us who pray “May thy Kingdom 
come,” and then leave to our Father the whole task 
of bringing it in? Cf. Ex. 14:15. Recall the circum¬ 
stances. The Israelites had been for only a short time 
on the march, but were already weary. Looking back, 
they saw the Egyptians pursuing; looking ahead, they 
saw the sea. Bitterly rebuking Moses, they said, 
“Were there no graves in Egypt, that you brought us 
out to drown us in the sea?” Moses fell on his face 
and prayed, but God said, “Do not stand still and 
pray. The way lies ahead. Plunge in and move for¬ 
ward.” It was not that Moses was to stop praying. 
He was to pray and “move forward.” Prayer must 
not be substituted for work, but one must combine 
them as did Nehemiah, the master builder. But we 
made our prayer unto our God and we set a watch 
against them day and night. (Neh. 4:9.) Remember 
the Lord and fight. (Neh. 4: 14.) In his autobiog¬ 
raphy, Frederick Douglass says, “I used often to pray 
for freedom, but that prayer was not answered, until 
it got down into my heels and I ran away.” 

B. Does not take the place, of thinking. James 1: 5-8. 

Have you ever wanted God to think out your problems 
for you? “Consider what this world would become if 
everything could be accomplished by prayer. What 
if men could sail their ships as well by prayer alone as 
by knowledge of the science of navigation, could swing 
their bridges as firmly by petition only, as by studying 
engineering laws; could light their houses, send their 
messages and work out their philosophies by mere 
entreaty? If life is to mean development and dis- 


41 


cipline, some things must be impossible until men think, 
no matter how hard men pray.”— Fosdick, “The Mean¬ 
ing of Prayer” 

C. Prayer is communion with God —an expression of our fel¬ 
lowship with Him. John 17. 

God’s great gift in prayer is Himself. “The prayer of men 
is his great desire. For such fellowship He made the 
worlds.” We talk with God as we do with our friends, 
sometimes for the sheer joy of talking, loving, enjoy¬ 
ing, thinking with Him, sometimes waiting on Him, 
just resting in his presence without words, worshipping 
Him. Often it means confession, and a receiving of 
the forgiveness that He is so ready to give. Some¬ 
times it means laying before Him our difficulties and 
other people’s difficulties, the things that we must help 
straighten out and the things too great for us to man¬ 
age, and always it means fellowship with God, a grow¬ 
ing nearness to Him, understanding and loving Him 
better, and from it we go out to work for the coming 
of his Kingdom, with 

1. Vision. 

“If chosen souls could never be alone 
In deep mid-silence open doored to God, 

No great thing ever had been dreamed or done, 

The nurse of full grown souls in solitude.” 

— Lowell. 

2. Power. (John 14: 12; 15: 5.) 

“Lord, what a change within us, one short hour, 

Spent in thy presence will prevail to make! 

What heavy burdens from our bosoms take. 

What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! 

We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; 

We rise, and all the distant and the near, 

Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear, 

We kneel, how weak! We rise, how full of power! 

Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong 
Or others—that we are not always strong; 


42 


That we are ever overborne with care; 

That we should ever weak or heartless be. 

Anxious or troubled, when with us in prayer. 

And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?” 

— Trench. 

3. Joy. (John 16:22.) 

“They looked unto Him, and were radiant.” 

—Psalm 34 * 5. 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Why is it, since so many prayers go up daily for the coming 

of the Kingdom, that it comes so slowly? 

2. How far does the influence of prayer reach? What is more 

important in prayer than asking for special favors? 
What do you think of the War-Time League of Inter¬ 
cession? Why do we fail to practice intercession? 

3. What distinction do you make between private and public 

prayer? How should they differ? How does united 
prayer help to marshal the moral forces of the universe? 

4. To what extent is victory in a great public battle of life 

dependent upon previous victory in an unseen battle? 
What was the relation of the Master’s habit of prayer 
to the controlling purpose of his life? What great issues 
of life must be fought out in secret prayers? 


43 


IX. THE NEED OF A GROWING VISION 


“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”—Proverbs 29: 18. 

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things 
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, 
think on these things.”—Phil. 4: 8. 


“And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith Jehovah 
That I will pour out my spirit upon all mankind; 

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 

And your young men shall see visions, 

And your old men shall have dreams.” 

—Acts 2 :17 {Weymouth). 


“Once in Royal David’s City, 

Stood a lowly cattle shed, 

Where a Mother laid her Baby 
In a manger for his bed; 

Mary was that Mother mild, 

Jesus Christ her little Child, 

“And through all his wondrous childhood, 
He would honor and obey, 

Love, and watch the lowly maiden 
In whose gentle arms He lay: 

Christian children all must be, 

Mild, obedient, good as He. 

“For He is our childhood’s pattern, 

Day by day like us He grew, 

He was little, weak and helpless. 

Tears and smiles like us He knew. 

And He feeleth for our sadness 
And He shareth in our gladness. 


44 


“And our eyes at last shall see Him, 

Through his own redeeming love; 

For that Child so dear and gentle, 

Is our Lord in heaven above. 

For He leads his children on 
To the place where He is gone.” 

— Alexander. 

O Lord, our Heavenly Father, ruler of heaven and earth, who 
hast opened our eyes more fully to see thy Love for all mankind, 
so help us by thy Spirit, fervently to make Thee known throughout 
the world. Grant to us, that abounding more and more in prayer, 
in labor and in giving, we may help to hasten the time when the 
knowledge of Thee shall cover the earth as the waters cover the 
sea. Amen. 

“We rise by the things that are under our feet. 

By what we have mastered of good and of gain, 

By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, 

And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet.” 

“To keep fellowship with God unimpeded by sin, uninterrupted 
by neglect, to think habitually, as though God were, instead of 
casually believing that He is, to practice love continually until 
love grows real; and to arrange life conscientiously as though the 
doing of God’s will were life’s first business—such things alone 
make spiritual growth a possibility.” 

“Becoming Christian from motives of fear as many do, we should 
press on to a fellowship with God in which fear vanishes in divine 
friendship and cooperation. Choosing the Christian life for self- 
centered reasons, because it can do great things for us, we should 
press on to glory in it as a cause on which the welfare of the race 
depends and for which we willingly make sacrifice. Beginning with 
narrow ideas of service to our friends and neighbors, we should 
press on to genuine interest in the world field, in international 
fraternity, and in Christ’s victory over all mankind.” 

A. The need for vision. Mark 8: 22-26. 

“Lord Christ, thy second touch our hearts demand. 

Each separate soul to see, his wounds to salve. 

His wants to understand, and lead him home to Thee.” 


45 


Jesus’ growing vision. Trace the growth of Jesus’ vision of 
his life work, go with Him on his first pilgrimage to 
Jerusalem, come out with Him to the banks of the 
Jordan, and receive with Him the revelation of his 
Messiahship. Follow Him into the wilderness where 
He chooses Isaiah’s vision of the suffering servant of 
Jehovah as his interpretation of his Kingship, and go 
with Him all the way through the busy days of service, 
into the Garden of Gethsemane and even to the cross 
on Calvary, and then try to understand his world mes¬ 
sage to his disciples as they heard it in Galilee. Matt. 
28:16-20. 

B. Laws of growth. Mark 4: 28. 

“Let no man think that sudden in a minute 
All is accomplished and the work is done:— 

Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it, 

Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun.” 

— Myers, “St. Paul” 


C. Means of growth. 

1. Reading. 

Devotional study of the Bible. 

Reading of newspapers—necessary to world fellowship. 
Biography—for inspiration from lives of great people. 
History—to see God in history and progress of the 
world. 

Poetry—to comprehend spiritual beauty. 

2. Thinking. 

Not merely read, but study , discuss, think. 

“Talk to wise people but do not regard their decisions 
as final.” Make your own decisions under God’s guid¬ 
ance. “For the Spirit which God has given us is not 
a spirit of cowardice, but one of power and of love and 
of sound judgment.”—2 Tim. 1:7 (Weymouth). 
“Before any important decision, when the evidence is 
all in, pause for a little and let God speak.” 

3. Practical experience of doing things in 


46 


a. Church—helps toward growth in reverence, humil¬ 

ity, loyalty, self-forgetfulness, and the spirit of 
friendliness toward others. 

b. Community—nearly every community will furnish 

a brotherhood made up of people of many races 
and many lands. 

c. Institutions and movements making for social wel¬ 

fare. 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Does that person grow more rapidly who does things from 

a sense of duty or under the influence of love? Why? 

2. Can one find in Jesus’ friendship all that satisfies his desire 

for growth? How does a person know whether he is 
growing? 

3. Is it right and natural for one to want to grow in person¬ 

ality and power? What makes a person great? 

4. What kind of control is greater than self-control? 

5. At what times have I been most conscious of God? Under 

what conditions have I grown most in my spiritual life 
during the past years? What are the greatest hin¬ 
drances to my spiritual growth? 


47 


X. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THE BUILDERS 
GO FORTH 


“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord 
is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in 
a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same 
image from glory to glory even as from the Lord the Spirit.”— 
2 Cor. 3:17-18. 

“Find a friend, believe in him and love him; see a great cause 
and give yourself to its work; feel the power of a book and satu¬ 
rate yourself with its spirit; find a brotherhood of spirits like 
yours in aspiration and join it; and loving your friend, serving 
your cause, absorbing your book, and cooperating with your 
brotherhood, do not think too much about your own character, 
for your character will take care of itself. You cannot choose to 
be Christ-like and attain your choice by trying; but you can 
choose Christ for your Friend, his Kingdom for your Cause, the 
Bible for your Book; the Church for your Brotherhood, and those 
consciously chosen influences will unconsciously transform your 
life.” 

“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart; 

Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move; 

Stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art, 

And make me love Thee as I ought to love. 

“Teach me to love Thee as thine angels love, 

One holy passion filling all my frame; 

The kindling of the heaven-descending Dove, 

My heart an altar, and thy love the flame.” 

— Croly. 

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against 
such there is no law.”—Gal. 5: 22, 23. 


48 


“Jesus had the most joyous idea of God that ever was thought 
of. . . . The Gospels show clearly that this joyousness of Jesus 
overflowed in all the familiar ways, that everywhere are the signs 
of a radiant nature. . . . None but a joyful soul loves nature as 
Jesus did, watching the changing weather signals of an evening 
sky in summer or considering the lilies, how they grow, more 
beautiful than Solomon in all his glory. None but a joyful soul 
loves children as Jesus did, and finds in their artless and care¬ 
free company a solace and delight. Jesus must have been the most 
radiant man to be found in his day in Palestine. He must have 
carried with Him an atmosphere of glad good-will. Like springs 
of fresh water by the sea, even when the salt waves of sorrow went 
over Him, He must have come up again with inexhaustible kindli¬ 
ness and joy.”— Fosdick, “The Manhood of the Master .” 

“Surely He cometh, and a thousand voices 
Call to the Saints, and to the deaf are dumb; 

Surely He cometh, and the earth rejoices 
Glad in his coming who hath sworn, I come. 

“This hath He done, and shall we not adore Him? 

This shall He do, and can we still despair? 

Come let us quickly fling ourselves before Him, 

Cast at his feet the burden of his care. 

“Flash from our eyes the glow of our Thanksgiving, 

Glad and regretful, confident and calm. 

Then through all life and what is after living, 

Thrill to the tireless music of a psalm. 

“Yea, through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning. 

He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed; 

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, 

Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.” 

— Myers, “St. Paul ” 

The Spirit with Which the Builders Go Forth 
Neh. 4:1-6; 1 Cor. 15: 58 

A. Enthusiastic cooperation —keep up morale. 

1. Content—Morale means discipline, training, cohesion, 
the ability to move together. It means nerve, courage, 
dash, a spirit of enthusiasm and confidence. But it 


49 


means more than that. It means confidence in one’s 
cause, faith in the right of righteousness to be trium¬ 
phant, cheerfulness under trials, the assurance of vic¬ 
tory for one’s cause. It is a group quality. The 
weakest man determines the morale of the line. So it 
must mean confidence in one another, the ability to 
think and feel together; the esprit de corps , the power 
to do team work. See Eph. 4. 

2. How attained—It comes from within, out of the hearts 
and convictions of men, from above, from the Spirit 
of God, from the sense of peace in God and the assur¬ 
ance that one is in line with his will. 

“Make me a captive, Lord, 

And then I shall be free; 

Help me to render up my sword, 

And I shall conqueror be. 

I sink in life’s alarms 
When by myself I stand; 

Imprison me within thy arms, 

And strong shall be my hand. 

“My will is not my own, 

Till Thou hast made it thine. 

If it would reach a monarch’s throne 
It must its crown resign; 

It only stands unbent, 

Amid the clashing strife, 

When on thy bosom it has leant. 

And found in Thee its life.” 

— Matheson. 


3. How maintained. 

a. By replacing distrust and suspicion with the spirit 

of confidence. 

b. By thinking of the common welfare in place of our 

individual, self-centered thoughts. 

c. By the sacrificial attitude of mind which subordi¬ 

nates self-interest to a larger good. 

d. By enlisting all possible agencies for good: 

Home 

School 


50 


Press 

Church—Sunday-school 
Young People’s societies 
Clubs, organizations. 

B. Patience, which is more than mere endurance. 1 Peter 2: 20- 

24; 2 Cor. 4:16-18. 

“Jesus’ courageous patience with undesirable situations and 
with the necessity of suffering sprang from his abso¬ 
lute trust in the good purpose of God. His task was 
to do the will of God for Him. The consequences were 
God’s responsibility and God would not fail to bring 
a worthy issue to all faithful work. Therefore the 
Master suffered patiently, endured courageously, sac¬ 
rificed freely, labored hopefully, for He was sure that 
God was for Him and that no one ultimately could pre¬ 
vail against Him. He looked even upon his death as a 
part of the plan of God, and resolutely said, ‘Thy will, 
not mine.’ Such trust as this is necessary to such 
character; you cannot have the result in hopeful forti¬ 
tude without having the cause in faith; without re¬ 
liance on God a man may be a cynic or a stoic, but he 
cannot be one who endures and sacrifices with glad 
confidence that ‘All things work together for good.’ ”— 
Fosdick , “The Manhood of the Master .” 

C. The spirit of joy. Phil. 4:4-7; Rom. 8:35-39; John 15: 

11; Acts 2:46. 

Jesus’ joy was at heart this satisfaction which comes from 
finding lost and needy people and helping them out. 
This source of exhaustless delight is at every man’s 
hand every day and yet how many let its treasure go 
unclaimed! 

Is your life by its radiation of real good cheer and good 
will bearing testimony to your friendship with the 
Master? 


51 


QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 


1. How does one learn to do teamwork? In how far should 

a person who is the accepted leader, carry out other 
people’s ideas instead of his own? 

2. What kind of a spirit is dominant in us when we fail to 

rejoice over the success of those who have surpassed us 
in that which we ourselves take pride in doing well? 
How can we get this spirit of genuine appreciation of the 
work of other people? 

3. Read Gal. 2: 11-16. What kind of a spirit is necessary in 

order to tell people frankly and kindly that they are not 
living true to their ideals? 

4. Should we ever try to cooperate with people who are work¬ 

ing from unworthy or insincere motives? 

5. What is our attitude when people tell us where we are weak 

or have failed? Do our hurt feelings come from wounded 
pride, or sorrow because we have failed to do our utmost 
in helping to build the Kingdom of God? 

6. Does a Christian necessarily have a sense of joyous fellow¬ 

ship with God? Is it a matter of temperament? If one 
is unsatisfied without it, how can she attain unto it? 

7. How can we help one to find the fulness of life in Christ 

without intruding on his personality? How important 
a part of Paul’s work was his personal sharing of the 
reality of his friendship with Christ? 


52 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Ball, Harris Franklin. A Working Faith. $1.00. 

Hunting, Harold B. The Story of Our Bible. $2.00. 

Glover, T. R. The Jesus of History. $1.00. 

Fosdick, Harry Emerson. The Challenge of the Present Crisis. 
50 cents. 

-. The Meaning of Faith. $1.00. 

-. The Meaning of Prayer. 75 cents. 

Fiske, G. Walter. Finding the Comrade God. 75 cents. 
Peabody, E. C. The Living Book and the Living Age. 60 cents. 
Slattery, Margaret. The Second Line of Defense. $1.00. 
Harris, Frederick M., and Robbins, Joseph C. A Challenge to 
Life Service. 75 cents. 

Rauschenbusch, Walter. The Social Principles of Jesus. 75 
cents. 


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